Presently, certain methods for evaluating the condition of skin are as much an art as a science. For example, dermatologists routinely perform preliminary diagnostics based on subjective feel and visual assessments. In other words, when trying to determine whether a skin region is cancerous, doctors frequently perform a preliminary evaluation based on the color of regions of skin and/or the roughness of a region of skin.
In most cases, preliminary evaluations are performed by looking at and feeling the skin and then performing a comparison between the actual skin condition and written or visual descriptions found in a book. In other cases, there may also be a reliance on previously evaluated skin conditions. That is, there is presently no simple way to characterize skin roughness or texture. Therefore, each evaluation is subject to a doctor's experience (e.g., time in the field, number of similar cases evaluated), visual acuity, sense of touch, and the like. Because of the subjective nature of the preliminary evaluation, an experienced doctor is more capable of performing a correct preliminary evaluation and a less experienced doctor would require more testing or expensive procedures, e.g., taking a sample, to arrive at the same result.
Therefore, it would be useful to the medical community to have objective quantifiable measurements of skin properties in order to evaluate skin more accurately as well as to provide quantifiable measurements that doctors can use to facilitate discussions between doctors. This information would also be valuable to the field of cosmetic evaluation.
For these and other reasons, a method and/or an apparatus that enables quantifying skin properties would be valuable.